I was a little surprised that Stingray changed the format in Edmonton. In the last book Capital FM had a 7.1 share which put them at #5 in a 20 station market which isn't bad. I don't know the Edmonton radio market very well so possibly The Breeze is filling something that wasn't there.

Been looking at a few Breeze websites, and as was mentioned before, Edmonton and Vancouver are a little more upbeat than the US versions that I have tuned in, but they all do play similar artists and songs overall. Oddly enough I am finding original Breeze station in San Francisco seems to play more Celine Dion, and Dan Hill than I have heard in Edmonton. But all of the 5 stations (Vancouver, Edmonton, Philadelphia, Buffalo and San Fran) are more or less playing about 75% of the same songs they were playing a week ago which strikes me a odd.

Most of Celine Dion's hits aren't Cancon. It's already hard to program Cancon in this format (which makes the Canadian stations a little more upbeat), so they're going to be a little lighter with her spins in order to play some Canadian artists that actually fulfill the quota. Dan Hill only has two tracks in the format (and they DO count as Cancon) and they're played pretty much equally between the Canadian and American stations.

Yes most of her material wouldn't be cancon, there is some though with material written by David Foster, Aldo Nova and Stephan Moccio. I just was surprised that she hasn't been played much at all that I can see on the Edmonton and Vancouver stations regardless of her song being cancon or not. She is about the most popular soft A/C artist ever. Dan Hill? Well, who knew? Haven't seen Sometimes When We Touch come up this much in the last 25 years.

When I was in radio in programming I always maintained that cancon is only hard if you make it that way. There is a lot of good familiar A/C material available, Fiest, Glenn Morrison, Lights, Chantal Kreviazuk, Amanda Marshall one hit wonders etc. plus a lot of 90's 80's and 70's material which would fit perfectly. They are overplaying Burton Cummings and Ian Thomas for some reason, these guys are already available in spades on other stations/formats. Absolutely no reason to overplay any gold material.

So far I don't really see The Breeze stations (particularly San Francisco) as doing anything different that hasn't been offered before. This is just the old EZ Rock format in my opinion or a slight variations of that. But if it hasn't been available in the market, who knows? I was surprised when I looked at the last book and it seemed like Capital FM wasn't doing that bad numbers wise.

Aaron or Brad, has the station in Edmonton been promoting the change on TV or newspaper at all? Did the Sun or Journal or any local TV say anything about the format change? I was struck by the station in Buffalo receiving some media coverage when they made the change to the Breeze the same day as Edmonton and Vancouver. The Buffalo News does a great job covering local radio and TV ratings, personalities and any format or programming changes.

Hahaha! Just a few more dollars for the Pattison billion dollar vaults! No local newspaper or TV ads or news coverage that you are aware of Jon? Buffalo Breeze WMSX had some local newspaper coverage and even a TV report on WGRZ regarding the new format change. They don't seem to be as hesitant about covering competing media. Buffalo newspaper reports on all the Arbitron TV, local news and Radio ratings and have a lot of local features on radio and tv personalities.